ABSTRACT
The chapter describes the San Francisco Bay Area as a dispersed metropolis, a polycentric region characterized by weak integration between residential communities and workplaces. The results are excessively long commute patterns unsupported by public transportation. The trend to decentralize established downtown employment centers is illustrated by one of the many decisions that originated in the 1980s. It resulted in suburban office parks like one in San Ramon, a small town in a former agricultural valley. Once established as an office park, decisions were made for a large new residential community in nearby Dougherty Valley. This triggered the need for water right which had to be secured in a highly circuitous manner. The chapter introduces the Plan Bay Areaof2013 that was adopted after a number of statewide initiatives to curtail CO2 emissions and deteriorating air quality and to coordinate land use decisions at the scale of the region. The chapter returns to methods available to urban designers who work at the scale of the region. A method of graphic representation is needed to convey the interrelated facts that designers need to act on. This requires a large canvas. In the natural sciences, methods of representation rely on sampling methods with reduced horizontal dimensions referred to as transects. Generally attributed to Alexander von Humboldt, such transects in his case recorded detailed botanical, climatic and physical observation during his 1802 ascent into the equatorial Andes. As a descriptive tool, a metropolitan transect records landform, urbanization, water, demographics and much more. Using transects, designers can communicate how decisions made in one place affect the whole of a region.
